Quick AVI Creator

[MilesAhead]

I just started messing around with this little freeware, Quick AVI Creator.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Quick_AVI_Creator

I haven't really explored the x264 side of it yet.  But for downsizing HD content to play on a stand-alone divx DVD player using xvid, it seems ideal.


After experimenting with the settings file, xvid.presets, I found I could add a One Pass Mode just by adding a section in brackets like an .ini file.  I copied the 2nd line from the 2 pass mode and just took out the stuff about stats and passes.  I've only tried one .wmv file but it processed it in both 2 pass and 1 pass mode without choking.

Even with resizing down to 720x480 it processed the video in One Pass Mode faster than real time on my quad core.  Looks like a nice little program.  It uses AvsP and generates an AviSynth script with the basic stuff for you to modify.

[MilesAhead]

Since my first post I've converted a few more .wmv HD to standard .avi using xvid codec without an issue.  A handy tool if you don't mind doing the files one at a time.  afaik there's no provision for batch mode.  But the nice thing is it fills in the stuff you absolutely need in the .avs script such as color space conversion, and leaves it to you to add filters. It seems to have at least built in .srt subtitle support but I haven't tried any subs with it yet.

[sajman99]

Thanks for sharing, MilesAhead.   I agree this looks like a nicely integrated package. The ability to fine tune the output sounds good, but I've never used AvsP before--hope the learning curve isn't too steep.

btw this is an interesting time for video encoding. Did you see this major announcement?  http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=328

Thanks to tireless work by Kieran Kunyha, Alex Giladi, Lamont Alston, and the Doom9 crowd, x264 can now produce Blu-ray-compliant video.  Extra special thanks to The Criterion Collection for sponsoring the final compliance test to confirm x264’s Blu-ray compliance.

With x264’s powerful compression, as demonstrated by the incredibly popular BD-Rebuilder Blu-ray backup software, it’s quite possible to author Blu-ray disks on DVD9s (dual-layer DVDs) or even DVD5s (single-layer DVDs) with a reasonable level of quality.  With a free software encoder and less need for an expensive Blu-ray burner, we are one step closer to putting HD optical media creation in the hands of the everyday user.

Not sure of all the implications of this, but it sounds like a game-changer to me.

[MilesAhead]

It is interesting because I recently went to divx.com because I couldn't get anything to play in my software divx player.  Figured I'd download a new version.  All the new players and codecs they are pushing, calling it "Divx Plus," is .mkv format!!  I probably made a mistake using AviAddXSubs to add subs to a lot of my .avi videos, tossing away the sub sources.  I don't think the new format is going to give a damn about embedded XSubs.  I hope I can find .srt to download when I need 'em.

Here's hoping my divx stand-alones keep on keepin' on for a few more years.

[Deozaan]

Thanks to tireless work by Kieran Kunyha, Alex Giladi, Lamont Alston, and the Doom9 crowd, x264 can now produce Blu-ray-compliant video.  Extra special thanks to The Criterion Collection for sponsoring the final compliance test to confirm x264’s Blu-ray compliance.

With x264’s powerful compression, as demonstrated by the incredibly popular BD-Rebuilder Blu-ray backup software, it’s quite possible to author Blu-ray disks on DVD9s (dual-layer DVDs) or even DVD5s (single-layer DVDs) with a reasonable level of quality.  With a free software encoder and less need for an expensive Blu-ray burner, we are one step closer to putting HD optical media creation in the hands of the everyday user.

Not sure of all the implications of this, but it sounds like a game-changer to me.

Am I understanding that correctly? You can put a DVD5 or DVD9 in a Blu-Ray player and it will play with near-Blu-Ray quality video?

Sounds similar to what people did about 10 years ago, putting DVD-format movies on multiple VCDs to play them in their DVD player when writable DVDs and DVD burners were still on the expensive side.

[MilesAhead]

The same programmer who did DVD-RB has had this beta out for awhile:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/BD_Rebuilder

You can reencode a BluRay rip to fit on a DVD9 or make it smaller to burn to a BluRay if you have a BluRay burner etc..

The thing with shrinking BluRay down is it takes lots of horse power and time. At the moment I'm using MakeMKV because it just rips and remuxes the selected tracks.  Then I use tsMuxer to convert to .m2ts so it will play more smoothly on my WD set top box.  Can't afford $300 for a BluRay DVD player yet.

edit: I don't have a BluRay DVD player but from what I've heard, they don't all support playing a BluRay structure off a standard dvd blank, like a DVD9. If you are thinking of buying a player I'd use this list as one resource:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

It has user comments about what the player will and won't do in real life.  Plus some valuable info like remote hacks to set them region free etc..

[sajman99]

Well, I'm still in DVD-land and haven't graduated to Blu-Ray-land just yet. I mean, I thought DVD quality was respectable with HCenc, but I'm just now starting learn about these newer encoders.

Apparently the x264 encoder has evolved to where video quality is exceptional even at very low bitrates. And many GUIs can support it too.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/x264_Encoder
http://www.x264.nl/

MileAhead, do you know if we can replace/upgrade the x264 encoder in Quick AVI Creator (getting back on topic ) and utilize the 'latest and greatest'? Or am I getting way ahead of myself?

Time-wise to shrink Blu-Ray, what would you estimate for a dual core machine? Thanks very much.

[MilesAhead]

I tried substituting the new x264 encoder and got an error msg.  But I didn't try very hard.
I haven't gone down the road with the x264 encoding because, as an example, I took an .mkv that was about 16 GB and produced an .mkv of about 5 GB in size.  The quality of the output for this particular one was indistinguishable form the input, but that may have been because the colors were so striking in the source.  The color almost had a candied quality to it, it was so saturated.  That was using Handbrake 1 pass on my quad core.  The run time for the compression was at least 4 1/2 hours.

I'm trying to get away from conversions rather than doing longer more involved ones.  That's why I got a WD set top box.  Get a video file onto HD and play it, delete when done.

I'm using Quick AVI Creator because sometimes I want a decent quality SD .avi file I can play on the SDTV. If you are interested in this area one place to start may be with the BD Rebuilder.  You should be able to pick up insights:
http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=1f12c09ac4aa965e1c7c47353f879e8e&f=75

Also MakeMKV is still in beta.  You can use it free as long as it is in beta status.  You can pick up some tidbits on that forum also:

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/index.php?sid=4be4035528d7074e6dae06d1ccd43204


I'm not into all the bframe iframe pulldown mumbo jumbo. I just try to learn enough to get what I want done without messing it up so badly I can't salvage any of the intermediate files.

Lately I've been experimenting with just using HCGui with a simple .avs file and DvdAutorGUI to produce very simple DVDs with no menu.  HC does seem to produce high quality results for DVD both when upsizing and downsizing the frame size.  If I should hit the lottery or for some other reason be all of a sudden owning a flat screen HDTV that's 5 feet wide then maybe I'll have to investigate maximum video quality.  But for the stuff I have to play on now, the tools I'm using seem good enough.

edit: btw the author of Quick AVI Creator seems to hang quite a bit on Videohelp.com. He uses the handle Red Wine there.  Here's the user comment section for his app:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Quick_AVI_Creator#usercomments

You could try sending a PM on videohelp.com to get some more info.  The thing that struck me strange about x264.exe is the file size.  All of a sudden it's over 6 MB when the ones distributed with programs I've seen are less than a Meg and a half.  I wonder why?  At first I thought they messed up and compiled with debug mode left on. But there was a 2nd release over 6 MB.  Weird.

[sajman99]

Thanks a lot for the info and links. There's a heckuva lot to learn, and I'm just getting started in this area.

I really like DVD Rebuilder so I'll definitely keep watch on BD Rebuilder's development.

btw there's also a Doom10 now. Let me know if Doom11 rolls out next week.

[MilesAhead]

Every now and then you run across a fun thing.  Like this program.  From what I gather from the home page, the front end is totally done using an installer scripting tool.  It's similar to writing a GUI front end with Inno Setup Pascal.. although in this case I guess he used NSIS.

An interesting approach.

http://download.videohelp.com/QuickAVICreator/

[MilesAhead]

btw there's also a Doom10 now. Let me know if Doom11 rolls out next week.

What did that guy keep saying on The Sopranos?  "I thought I was out... but they pulled me back in."  Buy divx player and WD player.. thought I'm nearly done with conversions.  Now this stuff that takes 5 times longer to process.  Oh dear, oh me, oh my.

[MilesAhead]

I did a run to reduce an .mkv and the results were promising.  This program may be a good alternative to Handbrake.  Only thing that threw me a bit was there's an option in x264 to set "zones" that's typically used to encode credits with less quality etc..  There's an edit to put in the starting frame of the end credits. I got a reply back from the author, the way to disable it is to put the last frame of the video as the number. He says you can use preview mode if you want to get the frame number to use the feature.

Eventually I'll get it right.  But the one pass completed without crashing. I have to do another run with another video to see if it's really stable.

The author seems amenable to answering questions.  You can check out his thread on videohelp:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/289721-Quick-AVI-Creator

[sajman99]

MilesAhead, looks like you're the first person to "discover" this neat front-end QAC. Nobody had commented for two years before you asked a question. Hard to believe but I guess the bunches of these conversion tools make some get lost in the pack.

Nice to see the author is responsive. Having full control of the generated Avisynth script is a definite +.

[MilesAhead]

Yeah, it is weird.  I'm on another board, Digital Video Forums, and after I found this on VideoHelp, come to find out there was an entry in DVF a couple years old.  I have to start checking that list. It's not so obvious where the link is.

Seems like every time I "find" something, it's already in there.  Only thing is many of the tutorials haven't been updated in awhile.  The board is nearly dormant these days:

http://forum.digital-digest.com/

edit: seems like the processing time is about the same if I downsize to DVD with HC 2 pass, or encode to .mkv with this using 1 pass.  The only thing is the DVD has the advantage I can play it on both the SDTV and HDTV.

[MilesAhead]

I did a run using x264.  Looks like the wave of the future but it takes a lot of horses.  On my dual core it ran 10 hours to encode a 90 minute video using x264 one pass mode.

But I do think for my machines this app is great for doing xvid one pass conversions.  I can convert to HD .avi or just add one line to the .avs script to size down to standard 720,480.

The .avi HD does look good.  But the x264 is definitely glossier looking.  If you have OctoCore PC then I recommend using this for x264.

The other good news is so far I haven't had a crash using this app.  Seems very stable.  The main thing I find disconcerting is once the video encoding starts, you really get no feedback how much longer the processing will take.

XVID4PSP seems better on that score.  Quick AVI Creator seems better for a newbie to get going.  The settings aren't as complicated.  You can start producing good output without a ton of reading.

[MilesAhead]

I tried this using x264 one pass mode.  Seems with xvid on a dual core system it uses one thread just to read the input.  The 2 cores aren't maxed out.  With x264 it maxed out both the cores.  I took a 90 minute .mkv about 15 GB in size and shrunk it to less than 4 GB in about 10 hours and change on the dual core.

Looks like if I want to do this as a regular job I have to run it overnight on the dual core.  The quad will finish faster but I'll have to listen to fan noise for 6 hours or more.  SpeedFan beta won't even run and the latest SpeedFan stable won't detect any fans in this PC.  Seems no way to adjust it without installing some 3rd party fans.  Not something I want to get involved in with the jumble of junk inside this box.  It's like working on a car after they stuck all those vacuum controls and hoses all over the place compared to pre-pollution setups.  The equivalent would be your own custom box with stuff set up according to some logic other than shaving a 1/10th of a cent per unit off the cost.

The good news is, once you get to the video stage and put in your settings, it seems to run to completion.  The bad news is, you don't get any feedback on progress or time to completion estimate.

Maybe I'll give BD Rebuilder a try.  I heard the latest beta lets you output either an .mkv or .mp4 file instead of an AVCHD disc structure.

[MilesAhead]

Thanks a lot for the info and links. There's a heckuva lot to learn, and I'm just getting started in this area.

I really like DVD Rebuilder so I'll definitely keep watch on BD Rebuilder's development.

btw there's also a Doom10 now. Let me know if Doom11 rolls out next week.

I'm messing around with BD Rebuilder now.  Seems like the .mkv output isn't perfected. I thought I told it to make an .mkv that would fit on a DVD5 but it was about 2/3 the size of the input.  I'm trying again with BD5 selected.  At the lowest quality setting it seems like it will process in about the play time of the source.  If the results are good then I could live with listening to the fans for 2 hours.  6 hours I start to go bonkers.

Nice and simple interface, if I can get it to do what I want that is.

[MilesAhead]

Reducing the size of BluRay for my WD set top box the fastest way with good results seems to be BD Rebuilder.  However if you need to burn a subtitle into the video, Quick AVI Creator looks like the one to use.

A similar .avs editor facility is apparently on the to do list for BD Rebuilder. If you don't have to mess with subs and want good quality output in fast one pass mode, this app cranks.  I tried the same film in both QAC and BDRB. The QAC produced slightly better quality in one pass mode taking about 4 hours to process the film.  BDRB took about 2 hours.  I increased the custom output size and now the BDRB output quality is quite good.

If you have a wall size HDTV then you may want to use 2 pass with the high quality settings.  But for play on CRT type HDTV like I have, the one pass mode looks very good.  Probably because I don't have to size down the resolution, the conversion is faster than using say HC Enc 2 pass .m2v conversion.  The quality is comparable in about 1/2 the time using x264 one pass encoding.

edit: btw if you have a hard time getting BDRB to encode video go to the support thread on Doom9.  There the author has links to the particular media splitters and other files needed, known to work with it. I got an error it didn't like my version of FFDShow and some other complaints. I went to the thread, downloaded and installed, reran the conversion.  It saw it had already demuxed files and asked if I wanted to pick up where it left off!!  Very friendly.